What Happens When a Session Becomes the Last One You Ever Could Have Had
The story in this post is real. Names and identifying details have been changed.
In 2023, I was out on a session with a friend — let's call her Meg.
We were working on images for a creative challenge. The goal was photographing my dog. Meg's dog “Ruthie” came along too, because Ruthie and my dog were friends, and it was the kind of evening - early summer, gorgeous weather, sunset at on acres of fenced in farm - where you bring your dog.
The session was about my dog. Ruthie was just there — playing in the grass, sniffing around the edges of things, being herself in the way dogs are when nothing is being asked of them. She wasn't the subject. She wasn't the plan.
But at some point during the evening, Ruthie wandered into the frame and I lifted my camera and made a few frames. No direction. No setup. Just: oh, there she is.
I never did anything with those images. They sat in the raw files from that session, unedited, unlabeled, in the hard drive in the drawer, on a folder from 2023.
The Call I Didn't See Coming
She was gone in one tragic instant, an accident no one could see coming. She was just barely 4 years old. Meg reached out — carefully, not wanting to ask for something that might not exist — to see if I had any photographs. She knew Ruthie had been along that evening three years ago. She thought maybe there was something.
“I know this is a long shot but last year or the year before we did a shoot of Carolina and Ruthie at the farm, do you still have any of those photos? ”
I went back through the hard drives.
This is the thing about saving everything: you don't know why you're doing it when you do it. The raw files from a session where the subject was someone else's dog, taken without intention, saved when I got home and never opened again — those don't feel like anything worth keeping at the time.
I found four images of Ruthie on her own. Her. I sent them to Meg.
She wrote back about one of them: that's 100% her.
What I Wish We Had Done
I've photographed dogs for years. I know better than anyone how quickly things change. And I still wish — with everything I have — that Meg and Ruthie had come in for a real session.
Not because the four images weren't meaningful. They clearly were. But they were candids from someone else's morning. They were accidental.
Ruthie deserved photographs made for her. Photographs where we were thinking about her best light and her best location and her personality and who she was to Meg. Photographs where the whole session was about documenting them — their specific relationship, their specific story.
We never got to make those.
Why I'm Telling You This
I don't share this story to frighten you.
I share it because the version of this story that ends in relief — I found four images, I sent them, she said that's 100% her — is only possible because I save everything. And because Ruthie happened to wander into frame three years ago, and I was already holding my camera.
Most people aren't as lucky.
Most people reach out after a sudden loss and there is nothing. Or there are phone photos — blurry, small, backlit, the kind where you can feel how much you love the dog but you can't quite see them. And those are precious. But they're not the same.
If your dog has never had a professional session — if you've been putting it off for the right moment, the right season, the right version of your schedule — I want you to hear this story and let it be the thing that changes your mind.
The right moment is now. It's always now.
If it's been too long, and the session you wish you had done didn't happen — I can help with that too.
→ Learn about custom painted dog portraits from existing photos.
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